Should journalists accept official positions?

[HASEEB ANSARI]

Should journalists accept official positions?
By Syed Kamran Hashmi

Albeit the democratic process has made a comeback and is much more stable and transparent than it was ever before, the old culture of rewarding your friends, unfortunately, has also resurged.

When Mian Nawaz Sharif appointed Ata-ul-Haq Qasmi as the ambassador of Pakistan in Norway, I honestly did not think too much about that nomination. My reason then was and still is simple: after a long decade of relentless power struggle, administrative immaturity and political intolerance, it was not considered to be that big a problem.

In that mendacious environment, there were only two characteristics that were admired across the board: loyalty and ability to spread disinformation, as propaganda had become a valuable tool to achieve political success. People who specialised in dragging the name of their rivals through the mud were promoted as ministers and advisors; some of them even found a place in the kitchen cabinet as well. A few of these emerging and talented young ‘stars’ had developed special skills to reuse the same old allegations of corruption, nepotism and incompetence over and over again by adding more twists and turns to them. Interestingly though, as deceitful as that culture was, and as deplorable as those schemes had been, not all the claims were untrue. Most were worth investigating.

Along with that, loyalty and steadfastness were also remunerated by the system. As a rule, each one of the democratically elected civilian governments rewarded its advocates with attractive ‘compensation packages’. These packages, which consisted of high profile political nominations with various perks and privileges, were doled out to friends and their families, irrespective of their competence and experience (or lack thereof), while disregarding the expertise of professionally trained, qualified and talented candidates. This practice was so common that none of these appointments, including the nomination of Ata-ul-Haq Qasmi, had struck me as a surprise. Additionally, I did not realise that an opinion-maker, who writes regularly for a newspaper — whether he has a degree in journalism or not — should not be offered such a career oriented job, a job that an officer in the foreign services aspires to attain all his life and is one of his incentives to join the service.

But that was then. Pakistan has changed a lot in recent years. First of all, we have further matured as a nation after facing another decade of dictatorship in which the constitution was defaced yet again, an amendment to provide legal cover was imposed on it one more time, and an unconstitutional decision by the Supreme Court was issued, once more, to seal any loophole in the process. Following in the footsteps of their civilian counterparts, the military rulers awarded many of the top civilian posts to their blue-eyed army officers even when they had no professional training or expertise to run those organisations. The only difference was that the military leaders claimed to distribute these posts only to improve the efficiency of these departments since soldiers were dedicated, educated, disciplined and talented — a myth that has been busted on multiple occasions. Anyway, real professionals did not like the notion of being ruled by the people in uniform but they lived with it hoping that one day, if democracy made a comeback, competence would be declared as the state policy, merit would be the yardstick to measure eligibility, and fairness would be our guiding principle.

Today, albeit the democratic process has made a comeback and is much more stable and transparent than it was ever before, the old culture of rewarding your friends, unfortunately, has also resurged. What we had hoped then, while we were protesting out in the streets against military rule in favour of justice and impartiality, did not translate into reality. Regrettably, the reality has shown us a different picture that is both painful and bitter, a picture in which a political analyst gets nominated as the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, and a columnist as the ambassador of Pakistan in the United Kingdom — yet again. This situation is disturbing for the readers as on the one hand, they find it difficult to trust the opinion of political commentators anymore, and on the other, it is even harder for their colleagues, who find it impossible to defend the allegations of ulterior agenda or a personal motive raised against their friends. For sure, a lot have voiced their concern at this situation; some have expressed their disagreement in a subtle way while others have vehemently written against it. It is certain that not all those who object are jealous nor do they bear any malice. Their point makes sense, which is that an opinion maker cannot hold public office and claim to stay neutral and objective. It is just not humanly possible. If it were true, then Bob Woodward would have become a great Secretary of State, and Seymour Hersh would have accomplished a lot as the Secretary of Defence.

However, it is still legal and still is the prerogative of the elected government to nominate a person they believe is going to represent them in the most effective way or will bring the desired results in a particular organisation. My objection is not as much on the administration that offers a job; instead my disagreement is with the person who accepts it. For me, no matter how passionate one feels about cricket or how confident one is of his diplomatic prowess, what is the job of a professional should be left to a professional. The analogy for this conclusion is straightforward: I do not want an engineer performing brain surgery on me; I do not approve of a captain in the army running a hospital, a general from the infantry heading a financial institution, a journalist coaching a cricket team and a political commentator building my house. I want experienced, talented and appropriately qualified people to be designated to do their job.

The writer is a US-based freelance columnist. He tweets at @KaamranHashmi and can be reached at skamranhashmi@gmail.com
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default...-11-2013_pg3_6